Disaster resilience strategy: getting ahead of climate change

(Barbados Today) Hurricane Dorian’s devastation of parts of the Bahamas is again a sad reminder of the Caribbean’s vulnerability to natural disasters. The frequency and severity of disasters, and the human and economic toll in their wake, has been increasing over time—a trend likely to intensify as climate change continues (see Figure 1). The sad truth is that disasters disproportionately affect the poor, who have limited ability to cope with the impact.

Given this clear and present danger, in a recent IMF policy paper, we make the case for vulnerable countries to develop nationally owned Disaster Resilience Strategies (DRS), with inputs from development partners and other stakeholders, to better address the challenges posed by natural disasters.

What is a disaster resilience strategy?

A disaster resilience strategy (DRS) is an umbrella framework for building resilience to natural disasters that rests on three complementary pillars: (i) structural resilience, aimed at “hard” measures such as building resilient infrastructure, and “soft” measures such as installing early warning systems, and enforcing zoning and building codes; (ii) financial resilience, which involves lining up the resources needed for recovery and reconstruction before a disaster strikes, including risk transfer instruments, recognizing that building structural resilience is expensive and will take time; and (iii) post-disaster/social resilience, which entails instituting detailed emergency response plans in order to contain disruptions to critical public services, knowing that despite countries’ best efforts disasters will occur. These three pillars complement each other because each is needed for building disaster resilience. Furthermore, properly executing any one could also reduce the cost of the others.

Read more at: Barbados Today

Source: CARICOM TODAY